Word to the Wise
Sunday, July 6, 2025 - 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time - C
[Isa 66:10-14c; Gal 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20 or 10:1-9,183]At that time the Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and places he intended to visit. He said to them, "The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest....Whatever town you enter and they welcome you eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, 'The kingdom of God is at hand for you.'" [Luke]
The Gospel According to Luke, along with the Acts of the Apostles also authored by Luke, is a story not just of Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection (as important as they are), it is also the story of the birth and spread of the Church. The gospel and the Acts are placed within this broad historical context in which Jesus plays the central role. The appointment of seventy-two new disciples represents the seventy-two known nations of the time. This will be echoed in the Acts of the Apostles at Pentecost with the list of some of those nations who hear the disciples speaking in their many tongues. In short, the Gospel and the Acts, written years after Jesus' life, death and resurrection reflect the experience of the Church up to the time of their writing. It is the experience of a growing missionary movement. Jesus' instructions to the new appointees are a seminary curriculum!
With our baptism and confirmation, we become one of those disciples on mission. Pope Francis reminded us of this in his first document, "The Joy of the Gospel" [Evangelii gaudium]. We are called to be "missionary disciples!" The election of Pope Leo XIV underlines this. He was born and raised in Chicago but after entering the Order of St. Augustine, he became a missionary priest in Peru, the head of his religious order in Rome, and then a missionary bishop in Peru, before being made a cardinal by Pope Francis and placed in charge of vetting possible candidates to be appointed bishops around the world.
Our own missionary outreach may be more local! For some, it may be regional or national and for a few, like Pope Leo XIV, international! What is important is to see ourselves in a missionary context by the way we live our lives. Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI promoted a "new evangelization" which was aimed at those Catholics who were at or had become beyond the margins of the Church! Is there some way that each of us can, by our lives, say that "the kingdom of God is at hand for you?" That may be communicated even without words by our attitudes and physical behavior. What is important is that we communicate it! AMEN
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